


Rumble My Bones

by what_alchemy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Body Worship, F/M, Female Foggy Nelson, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Guess we’re still learning stuff about each other, huh?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumble My Bones

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the "headaches" square of [my Daredevil bingo card](http://what-alchemy.tumblr.com/post/147963784672/hmmmm-where-do-i-start).

**2005**

When Matt received his acceptance letter to Columbia University, Sister Mary Constance read it to him with tears in her eyes. He could taste the salt in the air and feel the way her breath constricted around the lump in her throat. Some months later, when another letter came stating his roommate would be one Franklin Nelson, no other information, Sister Mary Constance squeezed his shoulder and said, “He sounds like a fine young man, Matthew. I’m sure you’ll be fast friends.” 

He didn’t need senses dialed up to eleven to know a comforting lie when he heard one. Matt had never had a fast friend in his life. Slow acquaintances, those were his speed. Not to mention instant bullies and quickly flustered people who wouldn’t even look at him.

As his orientation date drew closer, a kernel of anxiety lodged itself right underneath Matt’s ribs and grew daily—hourly. What would Franklin be like? Would he act like the spoiled jock-types at the community center who “accidentally” kicked out his cane, snickering and high-fiving with their buddies while never outright saying anything to him? Would he be the incessant question guy who wanted to know how someone like Matt could even navigate the world, dragging him around and grabbing his cane and snatching his glasses in the name of “helping?” Or would Franklin pity and revile him by turns, feel sorry for him even as he despised him for cramping his style?

If Matt knew one thing about spending time with guys his age, it was that he cramped their style.

But when he tapped his way into room 312, he discovered through the miracle of clerical error that there would be no guys with style to cramp.

Franklin Nelson—named after her grandfather but called _Foggy_ , thank you very much—was a girl. A woman. A very cheery and personable young woman who smiled so big she displaced all the air around her face and who smelled faintly of birthday cake. She laughed like rolling thunder up Matt’s spine, called him a handsome duck and said, “This is gonna be _awesome_.” 

And just like that, Matt had his first fast friend. 

Being friends with Foggy was like being enveloped in a cashmere hug 75% of the time. She was soft and warm and let him lean against her or lay his head in her lap. She never made him feel as though she didn’t want him around, and she was always excited to see him, to tell him something funny, to grab him and make him go out and _do shit, Matty, come on!_ And he was eager, too—to get back to their room just the two of them, to lose himself in her voice, in the smell of her on the sheets, in the conversations about everything and nothing by turns quiet and raucous. Sometimes, a little tipsy at the end of the night, they spooned in one of their twin XL dorm beds, whuffling into each other’s napes or collarbones. Matt loved when she let him be the little spoon, the gentle curve and heft of her breasts and belly pressing into his back, the weight of her arm slung over his waist and her thick, warm thigh wedged between his. It calmed something in him he’d never known was chaotic. It made him feel anchored and steady. She snored a little, and it lulled him to sleep whether it was an easy current from across the room or a hot puff across his bare skin.

He should have realized that this was what love felt like. 

On a crisp November day just before he would go home with Foggy for Thanksgiving, Matt was returning to the dorm from the library when he heard the particular notes of Foggy’s laughter coming from the student union coffee shop. He lifted his head and smiled to smell her shampoo faint in the air. He pivoted to meet her there; if she was headed back to the dorm, maybe they could go together.

The coffee shop buzzed with the white noise of multiple conversations and grinding coffee and steaming milk. Foggy’s heart rate lurched when Matt stepped into the door.

“Hey, it’s my roommate,” he heard her say before calling, “Hey Matt! Over here!” 

Matt grinned and followed the sound of her voice, pausing every few steps to let another body pass. 

“Your roommate’s a dude?” a female voice whispered urgently over Foggy’s table. “I thought you said you lived on campus.”

“I do,” Foggy said. “I realized the college had me down as a guy when my roommate letter came, but when I called them about it over the summer, they said to take it up with reslife at the beginning of the semester. But then I met Matt and he was the best! And turns out no one cares so whatever, I never bothered to fix it.”

“Oh.”

“What’s up?” 

“I don’t know, Foggy. You live with a _guy_. I really like you, but—”

“No, hey, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Matt stopped short at the laughing emphasis Foggy put on _nothing_. “I’m totally, one thousand percent into girls. Just, Matt’s my best friend, you know? If that bothers you, then yeah let’s not do this, but if it’s just that I live with him…”

Matt’s blood rushed in his ears and his face flamed. Foggy liked girls? Foggy liked girls a thousand percent? He had always been fine with that, with homosexuality as a _concept_ regardless of what Father Gilhooly said—or at least he thought he had been until this moment. Foggy liked girls. Women. To the exclusion of men. She’d never said anything. For some reason, the pronouncement now made him feel as though his heart were tearing in half. He missed whatever the citrus lotion-smelling girl Foggy was with said, even as he strode toward them mindlessly and came to a stop in front of their table. 

“Matty!” Foggy said. She touched his elbow lightly and guided him to the chair between herself and her date. He sat. “This is Jordan,” she said. “Jordan, Matt, my roommate.”

“Hey,” Jordan said. The note of sullenness felt damp in Matt’s ears. A dull ache swelled behind his left eye.

“You okay, dude?” Foggy said. “You look kinda…red. And clammy.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Um, sorry, yeah I’m fine.”

“Do you need me to go back to the room with you?”

Next to him, Jordan’s spine sagged, and Matt swallowed past the dryness on his tongue.

“No, no, it’s nothing,” he said. “I had a little headache and thought caffeine might help, but I might just go take a nap. You should stay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you back at the room.”

“All right, buddy,” Foggy said. “I’ve got my phone on me if you need anything.”

Matt forced a smile and stood up. He exchanged chilly goodbyes with Jordan before hightailing it out of there. As he left, he heard her say, “Did he just say he’d _see_ you?” 

He never heard Foggy’s response.

—

**2015**

When Foggy got to work before 8am on Monday morning, ham and cheese croissants for all in hand, she didn’t expect to stop short as if frozen in place by the sheer power of Matt’s wild eyebrow.

“What?” she said. 

He did that gapey guppy thing he had, where his jaw flapped around soundlessly for a while, before he snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. 

“Nothing!” he said, too loudly. He shuffled some papers and tipped his face down at them as if appearing to look at them would A.) help and B.) fool her. He _knew_. He and his totally unfair super senses had taken all of half a second to discern the fact that she’d spent the weekend having a delightful adult romp through some dude’s loft apartment in Brooklyn. And no sense she could think of other than frigging _smell_ would get him there.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Tell me there’s a spring in my step or, I don’t know, the special sound of spinal relaxation flowing toward you right now. Anything but smell, dude.” But it was futile to beg for a nice face-saving lie when they’d implemented a new honesty policy after certain illegal revelations took place.

Matt hitched his shoulders up and continued in his quest to straighten everything on the conference table.

“Sorry to disappoint, bud,” he said. 

Foggy threw the bag of croissants on the table and flung her hands in the air.

“I took like seventeen showers!” she said. “What the hell!”

Matt’s mouth twisted in a rueful little smile, the kind Foggy’d learned a long time ago meant he was beating himself up about something. He tilted his head at her.

“It’s the kind of thing that really lingers,” he said, apologetic. “Soap and water can only do so much in the absence of good old-fashioned time. It’ll be gone by tonight, don’t worry.”

Foggy made a flustered, nonverbal sound and tried not to fidget. She was a high-powered attorney in her finest department store suit complete with shoulder pads. She was a partner in Hell’s Kitchen’s fanciest up-and-coming law firm, and she owned half of it. She didn’t _fidget_ about _sex_.

“Hey,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips. Maybe her hands made their way to her hips too, just like Ma’s used to when Foggy and her brothers had done something naughty, who’s to say? “You’ve never reacted like this before, and I haven’t exactly been someone’s dried up spinster aunt the last eight years. What gives, Murdock?”

He hunched over some braille papers on the table, looking exactly like some kind of helpless newborn waterfowl and completing the picture with an uneven shrug.

“I just didn’t know you went with guys is all,” he said. He looked up at her with that sad little curl of a smile, and Foggy’s heart thudded, suddenly too close to the surface of her skin. “Guess we’re still learning stuff about each other, huh?”

 _It wasn’t a secret_ , Foggy wanted to say, but the words got all jumbled up in her throat, and then Karen was there and it was time to distribute croissants and get going on very important law stuff anyway, and it was so easy just to let it lie. Not too long afterward, Matt said he had a headache and went home early. Foggy tried to lose herself in client statements, research, and Chinese delivery, but as the hours ticked past, her leg wouldn’t stop bouncing and her brain wouldn’t stop yelling Matt’s name at her. 

The thing was, Foggy wasn’t a “let it lie” kind of person. It was just that there was one thing she’d ever let lie in her entire life, and it so happened to be tangled inextricably with whether or not she “went with guys.” Because she did, once in a while. Only, they weren’t Matt. So what was the point?

After Fisk, Foggy had a lot of time to panic in the privacy of her own apartment about the fact that Matt definitely knew she was in love with him and had been pretending otherwise for the last decade so he wouldn’t have to let her down easy. She worried for days—weeks!—about whether or not he would finally acknowledge it only to tell her “sorry, you’re not my type”—which she damn well _knew_ , thank you very much—or go on acting like nothing was amiss. She didn’t actually know which she wanted. 

As the months ticked by with no change other than the vague discomfort of hastily patched-over betrayal, she had to conclude he’d gone with the path of least resistance: not acknowledging shit. She was a little bit disappointed that the devil of Hell’s Kitchen turned out to be the coward of Nelson and Murdock, but far be it from her to be the one to cure his emotional constipation. She was, frankly, tired of being the one who did all the emotional heavy lifting in their relationship. Cajoling him to talk. Coddling him when he was sick or injured. Maybe if they both pointedly ignored it, it would finally be smothered away, and Foggy could have something real with someone else as she settled into the friendly partnership she should have had with Matt all along. 

But now this. 

Foggy glanced at her phone. 9 o’clock. Maybe he wouldn’t be out Daredeviling yet. She popped to her feet, slung on her coat, and barely remembered to lock the office door behind her.

—

Matt preferred Fogwell’s in the dark.

In the middle of the day it was full of people. Rather, it had three or four old timers yakking in the corners while they each kept one eye on the kids barely out of their teens sparring in the ring, but still, that was too many people for Matt. He tried a couple of punches on the bag, but between the conversation— _Jesus, Gino, my old lady, I don’t know what’s bigger, her mouth or her ass_ —and the spray of sweat and spit, Matt couldn’t concentrate on the burn of his muscles and the ache of his knuckles. He couldn’t think of anything but Foggy. 

Ten years of Foggy. Ten years of smelling other women on her, ten years of pushing down his own longing and being happy he got to be with her in all ways but the one he most desperately wanted, ten years of comforting himself so thoroughly with the knowledge that he was simply not the right gender for her that he hardly ever thought about the emptiness of his thwarted desires anymore. 

Ten years of believing he knew her better than anyone else, and it was a lie. Maybe not a malicious one, maybe not even on purpose since it wasn’t as though they’d ever debriefed each other about the ins and outs of their respective sexual orientations, but it was a lie nonetheless. He wanted to be angry, and maybe he was a little bit. Irrationally. Unreasonably. But he also knew he had no room to throw stones. He’d lied too—on purpose, with intent, and with heavier consequences. Questions of sexuality were less than nothing on the scales between them, Matt knew that. He would get through it, and he wouldn’t burden Foggy with his own baggage about it. Whatever his hang ups were, they were his alone to bear. He owed her that much, at least. He owed her his continued friendship after everything she’d been through with him, even if his heart finally broke for good. 

Matt grabbed his gym bag and left Fogwell’s. He wandered around Hell’s Kitchen, carefully avoiding Nelson Hardware, until he’d traversed the entire neighborhood two times over and found himself back in his own apartment. He sat in front of the window and let the buzz of the neon sign outside of it reverberate through his body until his flesh felt as though it has risen up to the ceiling, nothing but electricity. 

There, bodiless in the current, he knew he was angry only at himself: for making a false assumption all those years ago, for keeping his own secrets so close to the chest, for not trusting Foggy enough to reveal them to her and, however unintentionally, for creating the kind of relationship where she couldn’t reveal more of herself, either. All the flailing he was doing, had been doing for years—it was his own damn fault, and he knew it. 

So now he knew: it wasn’t men in general Foggy didn’t want. It was just Matt. He was the undesirable, hands-off, never-had-a-chance emotional wreck of a variable in the equation of their relationship. And how could he even blame her? He’d rather face an army of ninjas with nothing but a onesie and some gumption than talk about his feelings with the person he was closest to. He didn’t deserve her. And if her friendship wasn’t enough for a lowlife like him? Then he didn’t deserve that, either.

He stripped off to take a shower, and he stayed under the hot spray until it ran cold.

—

Matt was not Daredeviling. He opened the door before Foggy even knocked. He wore thin pajama pants with a thin cotton tee-shirt, braille book dangling from one hand, glasses nowhere to be found. So, you know, kryptonite.

“What’s up?” he said as Foggy slid past him. 

“What have you got to drink in here?”

“I’m well, Foggy, how are you?”

Foggy half-spun on one heel just to lob an extremely unimpressed look over her shoulder at him, no narration necessary.

“Please,” she said. “You probably wouldn’t know ‘well’ if it sank its teeth into your shapely glutes.” 

Gapey fish mouth followed by infuriatingly attractive pout. Foggy flung the door of the fridge open and grabbed two bottles of—Old Speckled Hen? 

“What even is this?” she said. She popped them open with a bottle opener magnet that lived on the refrigerator door. 

“True class,” Matt said, swiping one from her hand. 

“Hey, I’ll have you know those were both for me, bub.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Matt tipped his head back for a long draw. He was stubbly as all hell, and Foggy had to tear her eyes away before her body did something terrible like send all its blood southward. 

She weaved around the kitchen island and made her way to the recliner that was tacitly hers. She plopped down into it, the huff of her sigh matching the air her body compressed from the cushion. Matt sat down on the couch opposite her.

“Again, I ask,” he said, “what’s up?”

“I’m trying to figure something out,” she said. 

“With a case?”

“I’m rolling my eyes at you, Murdock.”

“Well, lay it on me, then,” he said, sweeping his hands outward. His mouth twisted into an unhappy little sneer. “To what do I owe the honor of an unannounced Franklin Nelson social call?”

Foggy’s heart stuttered, and she sat back in her chair. She chewed over what to say and how to say it without rending her garments and throwing herself into the sea.

After a while, she said, “If you’ve got something better to do, I can leave.” Quietly. Non-confrontationally. 

Matt let out a noisy breath and turned his face away from her. He waved a hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I’m not glad you’re here. I am.” He took a deep breath and visibly forced himself to face her. “I…want us to be okay again, Fog. I’m sorry I don’t make it easy.” 

“Sometimes I think we’ve never been okay, Matt,” Foggy said. 

Matt’s frown deepened. He set his beer aside and leaned forward, elbows anchored on splayed knees.

“I’m gonna say something really hard, okay?” 

Foggy’s throat tightened. She nodded. He took a long time to begin speaking.

“You’re the most important person in my life,” Matt said. “You’re my best friend and my partner and the only person who’s ever been with me through thick and thin. That makes us family. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I kept my senses and Daredevil from you. But I can’t keep apologizing. If you need time, I get it, but you can’t—you can’t keep holding it over my head. Either we’re moving forward, or we’re not. Either we’re friends, or we’re… people who see each other at work. It’s up to you, and I’ll accept any decision you make, but… but that’s where we are. So.” Matt’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he sat back on the couch. Foggy could see his jaw working as he ground his teeth together, and his breath was coming too quick. She may not have super powers, but she could read Matt Murdock. And Matt Murdock was _miserable_. Moreover, he was miserable at the prospect of her saying they weren’t friends anymore and walking out his door. But now she wondered if two big liars like them had ever really been friends.

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?” Foggy said after a moment. Matt’s head tilted in her direction. “I’ve never wanted to be your friend, Matt. It’s been great, don’t get me wrong. Great and heartbreaking and I was taking what I could get, but it’s never been what I’ve _wanted_.”

Those thick brows of his furrowed together. Gapey fish mouth, followed by a weird, inquisitive little sound. Foggy sighed noisily and slumped back in her chair. She took a long draw of the Old Speckled Hen. It was fantastic, damn him.

“I figured you knew,” she said. “I thought you were saving me the embarrassment by not saying anything, which kind of only made it worse when—” She waved her arms around the spot where she’d found him pumping blood out by the gallon on his living room floor. “— _this whole thing_ went down, but it’s pretty obvious we’ve got some air to clear. And maybe now that air is mine. Which makes it sound like I farted all up in here, but I didn’t, you know that. What’s up with that phrase? Is it about farts? Oh my God, what do you do about farts, Matt?”

“Foggy.”

“Sorry.” She shook her head and waved a hand around. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath and looked at him straight on. He was pouting, just a bit. It made her heart swell. “So I’m a big queerdo,” she said. “You knew that. But I guess what you didn’t know is that includes girls, boys, everyone outside and in between. But mostly you, Matt. Always—” Her breath shuddered out of her. “Always you, is the thing.”

Matt’s eyebrows went up and his face turned that blotchy, unattractive red that happened when he was embarrassed. Foggy’s heart sank and couldn’t even be brought back afloat with a generous application of Matt’s gapey fish mouth. She set her beer down and hefted herself up out of the chair. 

“Right,” she said, making a beeline for the door. “So that’s out there. Haha. Moving on, or—or not, just like you said. You know where to find me, and hey, if not, well, there’s work and I told Bess I’d work on her will and stuff, so maybe I’ll be out of the office for a little bit, that would be fine—”

Matt cut her off with a sudden hug. She forgot, sometimes, how much bigger than her he was. She knew being on the rounder side of the shape spectrum gave her a skewed image of herself— _Foggy as Sasquatch_ was kind of the picture she held her in head, and it would surely make a great painting someday. But she was short, and her being a little tubby didn’t stop Matt’s arms, strong and hard, from closing around her and locking her in against himself. Her face was mashed into a pair of grossly unfair pecs, and enveloped all close like this, she felt _small_. He smelled good, too. He could probably name every obscure thing he smelled of like threads to be counted, but to Foggy it was just _Matt_ and _good_ and _comforting_ and _grade A genetic material, let’s be real._. 

Matt strangled a weak little rasp out of her, which was not at all a signal for him to let go, but he did anyway.

“Are you okay?” he said. “Sorry.”

“I’m fine,” Foggy said. “Get back to snugging.”

She got a full-blown smile for that, teeth showing and eyes crinkling and everything. When his hands came forward to cup her cheeks, she drew in a sharp breath.

“Oh, _don’t_ ,” she whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut against the look on his face when she said it. But his hands were warm and big, and his thumbs swept across what passed for her cheekbones, and then his forehead was against hers. “Please don’t.” The words caught on his lips.

“Full disclosure,” he said, voice rumbling darkly through the bowl of her belly. “I thought I was the pathetic guy in love with his lesbian best friend he had no shot with. Still want me to stop?”

“Oh.” Foggy swallowed as if it would stop the way her heart was trying to thump right from her chest to Matt’s. “Um. No?” She leaned in.

“’cause I’m gonna kiss you,” he said, pulling back from her parted lips. “And once I start I’m probably not going to be able to stop.”

“Jeez, Murdock, just kiss me, already.”

She felt the huff of a snort on her mouth just before Matt caught her lower lip and the very tip of his tongue barely touched hers. She whimpered and buckled into him, but she held on to him with fistfuls of his shirt. A fission of electricity sparked at her tailbone and lit up her spine even as it sent blood pumping heavy between her legs. Matt hummed into her mouth, his hands threading through her hair, and she stepped closer to him until the swell of her tits wouldn’t let him nearer. She let her hands slide around his hips to cup the ass she’d been salivating over for the last million years and gave it a squeeze. Matt groaned and snapped his hips into hers, and _god_ she wanted to feel the full length of him hard and hot against her just like that, but he yanked himself away and took a step back.

“Whoa,” he said. He was panting.

“Guh,” Foggy said.

“I need a minute.” 

“Yeah, um. Definitely, yes.”

Matt scrubbed through his hair, leaving it sticking up every which way as he let out a slow breath. His erection strained his sweats comically, but she knew she might implode if she kept her eyes on it. Instead, she drank in the flush of his face. He held a hand out to her, and she took it.

“Sit with me,” he said, and led her back to the couch. Her body was humming, all her blood thumping close to the surface. They sat, and Foggy let herself slouch into him. She wanted to feel him against her, skin on skin, starved for it now that the possibility had become a reality. It felt too surreal, too fragile—she needed to touch him, lest he blow away like dust. 

They arranged themselves a little awkwardly, both of them in a half-pretzel position with their arms around each other, Foggy’s head nestled on Matt’s shoulder and his cheek in her hair. She shut her eyes and tried to become one with the weight of his arms around her, the smell of him, the scratch of stubble on her temple. 

“I want to do this right,” he said, his voice vibrating up her spine. She shivered. “I’m playing for keeps, Fog. I couldn’t take it if I did something rash and fucked everything up.”

“We,” Foggy said. “We’re making this decision, you and me, together. And we’re not gonna fuck it up, and if we did, that would also be something we did together. Right?”

“Right,” Matt said. He cleared his throat. “Right.”

Foggy lifted her head to look at him. His eyes were wide and beautiful, like moss over rich, fertile earth. 

“Someday I’ll get you to put down that boulder you’re carrying, Murdock.” Foggy smoothed some of Matt’s hair down. He closed his eyes. She let the pads of her thumbs trail over his bushy eyebrows, down his nose, across the crests of his cheekbones and then over his plush mouth. His lips parted and his tongue flickered over her skin to steal the breath from her lungs. Her loins throbbed all over again and Matt whimpered. He pressed closer and buried his nose in her neck, heaving in a deep breath. Foggy _burned_ , knowing what he smelled.

“God,” he gasped. “God, Fog, we have to stop.” 

Foggy whimpered but let him go.

“Let me take you out,” he said. “Let me take you on a date. Let me buy you dessert. Let me—let me spoil you, Fog, just like I always should have. Friday night. Every Friday night, even.”

“You know we make the same amount of money, right?” Foggy said. “No wage gap for the progressives at Nelson and Murdock. Also, you know that amount is zero?”

“So we’ll take turns,” Matt said. “We’ll show each other how it should be. No games. No secrets. No taking each other for granted.”

Foggy smiled and tangled her fingers in his. She wanted to ask him how this happened. She wanted to ask him how he was even interested in someone like her when the only people she’d ever seen him with looked a lot more like Karen. Instead, she laid her head on his shoulder and let out a contented sigh.

“You know?” she said. “That sounds really good.”

—

The trouble was, Matt couldn’t see himself with Foggy on any of his usual go-to dates of choice. Swapping getting-to-know-you anecdotes over appetizers at a nice restaurant? They already knew each other’s most embarrassing peccadillos. Drinks and asking her to describe the spectacular view of the cityscape from a rooftop bar? Foggy would just rib him and ask if that sweet line of bullshit worked on all the girls. Intimate braille readings by candlelight of Thurgood Marshall’s most inspiring work while he let her imagine what else his fingers could read? He didn’t have to imagine the laughter—he’d lived it a hundred times before.

On what kind of date did you take the best friend you’ve ever had?

The end of the work day on Friday came complete with a raise in Foggy’s heart rate. She’d been alternating between avoiding looking at him and burning a hole in the back of his head while Matt pointedly stayed in his office for fear of making an idiot of himself by bending her over some desk or other. At 5 o’clock, Karen rolled her eyes, stood up, and announced she was leaving.

“You two better take care of this before Monday so I don’t literally choke on the sexual tension next time I come into work.”

“ _Karen_ ,” Foggy hissed.

“Thanks for the concern, Karen,” Matt said. He could hear the slick snap of her grin before she strode out of the office with a flip of her hair over her shoulder, head held high and hips swaying. Foggy exhaled noisily beside him. He faced her and steeled himself when he realized she was holding her breath. His smile came out pained. “I don’t…actually have a plan,” he said.

Foggy snorted, and with that, all the tension seemed to evaporate from her posture. 

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Good thing for you I’m around, because I have a great one. You ready?” She stuck out her elbow. 

Grateful and with a bursting heart, Matt let her lead him to their date. First, they stopped at her place, where she changed and then banged around the kitchen filling up a tote bag with food and the nearby bodega’s finest $8 bottle of red. Then, when they struck out again, Matt was surprised to find he knew where she was taking him.

“My place?” he said. “Really?”

“You’ve got that sweet roof entirely to yourself and you only use it for weird, clandestine purposes instead of the seduction palace it is, Murdock,” she said. “So tonight, we’re gonna remedy that. That cool with you?”

“Yep,” Matt said, grinning like a big sap. “Yep, that sounds good.”

“Good.” She darted in to land a kiss on his cheek. Instead of guiding him as usual, her hand slid into his and together, they walked to his apartment.

After Matt changed out of his work clothes, Foggy loaded him up with fluffy blankets and pillows and told him to go build them a nest while she got plates, glasses, and utensils. On the roof, Matt spread out three blankets and left one to cover them with when the night got chillier. He stacked up the pillows around half the perimeter of the blankets and waited at the roof wall for Foggy to arrive. He tilted his head back and took into himself the sounds of the city: people’s happiness, their suffering, their frustration and jubilance and pain. He heard, he _felt_ the bustle of the city and all its teeming emotions. 

He could choose Daredevil over Foggy right now. 

He could rush past Foggy on the stairs right now and throw the suit on—run until the wind nipped at his face, run until he found something worth pounding until the taste of blood threatened to overwhelm all his other senses. He could give himself to his city like the martyr Foggy had accused him of being in the dark days following the bloody revelations of his abilities. He could let the devil free the way he’d always dreamed of doing—and lose everything else he’d ever held dear. His practice, his partner. The way she smiled at him, and stood up for him, and made fun of him. The way her hair, her skin, her sweat and saliva and secretions smelled. The way she seemed to sit up straighter and speak with more confidence when he was around, and the way he felt lighter with her than he’d ever felt. Even when he was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

He pulled away from the edge of his building, shut out the noise of the city, and turned around as Foggy pushed open the door. Three strides and he was by her side, relieving her of the weight of plates and utensils and wine glasses.

“Let me,” he said.

“Oh, I’m dying to, Murdock, believe me,” Foggy said. Matt smirked at her and swept his arm out toward their fort.

“Your castle, my lady, as requested.”

She patted his ass as she brushed past him. Matt absolutely did not yelp, and Foggy totally didn’t snicker at him.

“Good fort, Matty,” she said, setting the food down before reclining into the bedding. “Now come lay with me.”

“Lie,” Matt said absently. Foggy scoffed.

“Yeah yeah,” she said. “Come _lie_ with me, Mr. Summa Cum Laude.”

“We could lay an egg,” Matt said as he knelt beside her.

“Don’t give a girl ideas,” Foggy said. She tugged on his elbow and he settled in beside her. 

The concrete was rough on his skin and hell on his bones even through three layers, but Foggy was warm against him and that soothed all ills. He kissed her, gentle, and she melted into him. When he pulled away, they were both breathing hard. He set his forehead against hers and cupped her cheek, thumb tracing the swell of her cheekbone. 

“It’s just some sandwiches and chips,” she whispered. 

“A feast,” Matt said. He trailed a hand down the line of her neck. Her pulse was strong, thumping into Matt’s body. She arched toward him and the curve of her breast brushed his hand. He stilled his fingers on her throat.

Breathless, she said, “So do you want to hear my theory?”

“Desperately.”

“We’re basically strangers.”

Matt blinked and pulled back.

“Eh?”

“Well, we know each other in a particular context,” she said. “But with this, things are different. We need to get to know each other all over again, and not just because of sex and romance and all that. You thought I was a flaming homosexual—”

“Um, about that…”

“…I thought you were a regular old blind dude without superpowers, and we both thought the other couldn’t possibly be interested. So we’ve got a long way to go, I figure, but we can’t do it the way other people do it. It would be funny, wouldn’t it? Us on a first date, so careful not to let the weird shit show through.”

“Ha.” Matt slid his hand down to her hip. “I guess the cat’s out of the weird shit bag already.”

“Yeah,” Foggy said. “You and me, coy firsts and arbitrary dating rules designed not to show our hands, that’s not our story.”

“What’s our story then?” Matt asked, soft.

Foggy shifted onto her back and the moment stretched wordless between them. Hell’s Kitchen itself seemed to pause for her answer. After a long time, Foggy lifted her arm and pointed into the sky.

“The sun’s setting,” she said, “and the moon looks like a slice of cloud. Do you remember that, how you can see the moon in the daytime sometimes?”

Matt couldn’t speak. He shook his head. She dropped her arm back down.

“It’s stuck in the blue,” she said, “like… like eggshell and cotton balls and the smell of ice. When you get closer to the horizon, other colors are churning, orange and purple and stuff that doesn’t have a name. It makes you feel like it’ll heat you up from the inside, toes to ears. Soon, it’ll consume the blue and the moon will shine brighter and everything around us will look just a little bit violet. Say what you will about air pollution, but you can’t beat the view.”

Matt swallowed, listening to the steady expansion and contraction of Foggy’s breath. 

“You know,” he said after a moment, voice rough. “I don’t know if I ever saw a star. Sometimes I don’t know how much of what I remember is a real memory, or if it’s something I read about one time.” Foggy squeezed his hand.

“We’ll rent a cabin in the Adirondacks someday,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about them.”

“That’s… God, Foggy.”

“Your turn,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what it’s like for you, lying under a sunset. With me.”

Matt licked his lips. Foggy’s heartbeat kept steady time; he could feel it in the deepest core of himself.

“It’s a kaleidoscope for the whole body,” he said. “I can smell the fryers at the Chinese restaurant down the street, and someone across the alley’s baking muffins, but there are the garbage cans lining the curbs too. Someone’s listening to hair metal ballads on their iPod in their apartment and doesn’t realize they’re singing along as loudly as they are. There are home improvement projects and violin lessons and arguments and faked orgasms. I can feel the traffic rumble my bones. I can taste the ozone turning the sky all those colors. But most of all, Foggy, most of all, there’s you. In this fort or five blocks away, you’re what fills my senses and anchors me here.”

The humidity between them rose, and Matt felt Foggy close her eyes. She pulled his hand up to her mouth and rested her fist against her lips. 

“Matty, you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m pretty much a sure thing tonight.”

Matt barked out a laugh.

“Yeah?” he said. “We gonna eat our picnic first?”

“Yeah,” she said, and didn’t move, didn’t smile. Matt shifted closer to her, resting his forehead against her temple.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Are we okay?”

She nodded. He opened his hand over mouth and let his fingers curl around her jaw, thumb resting over her lips. She closed her hand around his wrist and held him there.

They let the night sky drink up the sun. They ate their sandwiches and pulled the extra blanket over their bodies to speak in low voices. Foggy traced the lines of Matt’s face, and Matt wondered what she saw there, what she felt.

—

Foggy didn’t think the rooftop blanket fort thing through. Rather, she didn’t think about how her back would feel when she and Matt finally moved beyond kissing. She tugged him back down the stairs with a fist full of his cotton t-shirt only to be shoved into the wall once they were through his apartment door, Matt’s head buried in her neck, his dick pressing insistently against her through three layers of clothes. She moaned and ground into him as best as she could at this angle.

“Please,” Matt said. “Please, I need to taste you. The way you smell, God, Foggy, it drives me crazy.” He opened his mouth against her pulse point.

She was molten between her legs. When she clenched around nothing, her ache slick and wet, she knew exactly what it was he smelled. Had probably smelled on her a million times only to turn away. 

“That’s embarrassing,” she said, breathless.

“No, no,” Matt said, bearing her down on the couch, only to cast his clothes aside and kneel before her. “That’s like expecting the ocean to be embarrassed when the tide comes in.” He hooked his thumbs under the elastic of her leggings and drew them down her legs. They turned inside out and she kicked them off just in time for Matt to yank her panties off and shove her t-shirt over her bra, hand trailing down the generous curve of her stomach. She attempted to suck it in, but Matt made a nondescript negative sound and shoved his nose into her belly. “Don’t do that, Fog,” he said. He dragged his stubble over her navel and around to her barcode of stretch marks, inhaling deeply all the while. The cool of it made heat gather at the base of her spine, and she let her legs fall open for Matt to settle between them more firmly. He hooked his elbow under one of her knees and shoved that hand up into her bra to tweak roughly at a nipple. She cried out and bucked into him. She gripped Matt by the hair even as she shoved her bra up and rolled her other nipple in tandem. Matt groaned just before slanting his mouth over her clit like a parched man presented with nectar. 

Foggy’s breath was harsh in the big empty space Matt called an apartment. He sucked hard on her clit and she had to ease him off. He blinked dazed eyes up at her, chin shining, and she twisted her nipple hard at the sight.

“Too much,” she said. “Just—just swirl the left side of it with your tongue.”

“Okay.” Matt cupped her boob and toyed with her nipple one last time before settling both hands on her hips and bending to lap at her again. She sighed and brushed the hair away from his forehead. She let her head loll back against the couch, her eyes slipping shut. She knew she should have kept them open so she could burn the sight of Matt bobbing around, color high and eyes drunk, between her legs, but he was sipping at the core of her and swirling away and she couldn’t help it. Her free hand crept down to link with one of his on her hip, and he held on tight. 

He alternated following her instruction with thrusting his tongue deep inside her. It didn’t do much for her, but he kept making this low animal growl when he did it until he was just groaning continuously, and the sound of it vibrated through her until she was practically arching off the couch. She let go of his hair in order to yank at her tits even as she bucked up into his mouth. He was jerking off steadily now, but she had to ask, she had to come.

“Can you finger me?” she said. “I need your fingers, I need—” Two fingers plunged inside her and the words slipped away. She arched her ass right off the edge of the couch as Matt drummed his fingers against her anterior wall and made her gush. He grunted and lapped it up before returning to swirl his tongue on her clit. Her eyes rolled behind her eyelids and she grabbed his arm to grind herself harder into his hand. “More, more, more, more,” she was saying, mindless, messy, and wanting so badly. He tucked one more finger inside her, and then another, and it was a stretch and it hurt just right and she clamped onto his hair again to push into his tongue. “Oh shit,” she said. “Oh fuck, Matty, I need—”

“Tell me,” he growled. She whimpered before shoving him away and pushing him down on the floor. She didn’t even get a moment to savor how he looked, naked on his knees, hair askew, face slick with her own leavings, cock flushed dark at attention, before she had him on his back and clambered onto his face. He locked his hands on her thighs and sealed his mouth over her clit, tongue flickering rapidly as he groaned right into the core of her. She yanked him by the hair even as she ground down on his tongue, and she felt the coil of her orgasm twist tightly at the base of her spine. Matt’s hands came around to squeeze her ass, she pinched her nipples and then she was gone, head thrown back, vision gone white, gasping in silence as her breath hitched and fluid rushed out of her. She rode the crest until her body shook, and then she was borne down onto the floor by strong arms and gentle hands. She heard Matt sigh before he cupped one breast and set his mouth on her nipple, sucking firmly. Heat pooled in her cunt as if she hadn’t just come. He was on his side, legs tangled in hers, cock hot and wet on her hip. The floor was hard, but she couldn’t care. 

“Matt,” she said, voice a croak. 

“Hmm.” When she blinked her bleary eyes, she found him nestled into her tits, suckling one beatifically while stroking the other. 

“I love getting fucked after I come,” she said. His eyes fluttered open. “Please,” she said. 

He lifted himself off of her and hopped up. He teetered on unsteady legs before holding his hands out to her and hauling her to her feet as if she weighed nothing. 

“The condoms are in the bedroom,” he said. “Wanna know what silk sheets feel like, or do you wanna give our knees hell on this hardwood?”

“Oh we’ll flood the hardwood some point, Murdock,” Foggy said. “Maybe not tonight, but it’ll happen.”

Matt smirked and led her into the bedroom. His ass was tight and round, begging for a kiss and a slap. Maybe later. She shucked her shirt and bra along the way and arranged herself in those famed silk sheets as he fiddled with finding a condom and getting it on. She resisted the habit to cover herself in front of a new lover. Matt was suitably appreciative and probably knew more about the shape of her without sight than any of her previous lovers had with it. She waited to feel self-conscious but found she only had a cautious excitement growing in the warm little cockles of her heart. She had Matt, finally, and she was pretty sure she got to keep him.

He knelt beside her on the mattress and she drew him down for a kiss. He tasted of her, fresh and thick, and it only made her want him more. He bent to suck one of her tits again, nuzzling into it and breathing deep before switching to the other. She sighed and spread her legs around him.

“God, Matt,” she said. “That feels so fucking good.”

“I thought about this so much I had to go to confession.”

Foggy laughed.

“Bless me, Father, for I can’t stop thinking about my best friend’s glorious tits?” 

“Something like that,” Matt said, smile curving around Foggy’s nipple.

She sighed and tilted her hips up. She swept her hands up Matt’s arms in appreciation, and then he pushed inside in one hard thrust. He was thick and so, so hard. He set his forehead against her collarbone when he was in to the hilt, and she stroked his back. He pushed up onto his elbows, hands in her hair, and kissed her long and languorous as he rocked inside her. She tightened around him, hooking her feet together behind his back. He kissed her eye and her jaw and swirled his tongue into her neck, which may have made her squeal, but when he curved himself over her to suck her tits again, she knew she could come again. She pushed her hand between them to work her clit.

“Could you—” Matt’s mouth clicked shut.

“What do you need, Matt?” Foggy said.

“Could you be on top?”

Foggy grinned and snuck a kiss to Matt’s nose before she rolled them and straddled his hips. She sank down on his cock and Matt’s groan overtook hers. 

“God, you’re so _wet_ ,” he said, smoothing his hands down her sides to rest on her hips. Foggy just hummed and steadied her hands on his shoulders as she rolled her hips. He moaned, too loudly, but he was an intelligent man who took the opportunity to plug his face hole with the tits in his face. The smarts were definitely why Foggy liked him so much.

“Fuck, Matt,” Foggy said. She pistoned her hips into his in sharp jerks to the crescendo of his moaning. She wanted to lean back, get him in deeper, grind her clit harder into his pubis, but there was nothing in the world right now that could entice her to tear her nipples from his mouth. She made one more tight circle of her hips and he shouted, muffled by her boobs, eyes squeezed shut. She sat upright on him, rocking slowly against him as he shook out the aftershocks. When he finally slumped beneath her, she cupped his face and kissed him before sliding off.

“Want to?” he said.

“Hmm?”

He tapped his chest and raised his eyebrows, tip of his tongue pink and tender between his lips. 

“Oh.” She laughed. “No, I can wait ’til you get your second wind. You will get a second wind, won’t you?”

“Definitely,” he said. He peeled the condom off and tied it before sending it sailing with perfect precision into a little garbage can in the corner. He reached for her, and she went gladly, laying her head against his chest and slinging her arm over his stomach. She listened to his heart slow down until it reached its steady resting rate. “So,” he said after a while. “That was pretty…”

“Awesome? Amazing? Astounding?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

“I always knew it would be.”

“Me too.”

“You thought I was a lesbian!”

Matt spluttered. “Yeah, and I always thought if, _if_ I could convince you to give me a chance…”

“Oh my God,” Foggy said, “you thought you could _convert_ a _lesbian!_ Matt!”

“Hey, I’m telling you my deepest darkest private fantasies over here,” Matt said. “Don’t kinkshame me in my own bed. Besides, it’s not like I did anything about it. Obviously.”

“Who told you about kinkshaming?” Foggy said. “And anyway, I really don’t know how you missed who I was sleeping with if the frigging smell of them doesn’t come off in the damn shower.”

“Must have been the timing,” Matt said. His shrug jostled her head. “Never got even a whiff of a man. But God, Marci’s perfume. Bleugh.” 

“Her perfume’s really nice, actually,” Foggy said. “She gets the kind for rich people.”

“I know she does,” Matt said. “Subtle. High quality. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Then what’s your problem with it?”

“It was on _you_ ,” Matt said. “Between your breasts and between your legs, clinging. Reminding me of what I couldn’t have.”

Foggy tipped her head up to look at him. Quarter profile. Plush lips. Stubble. Snub nose. 

“Okay, I’m just gonna have to pretend you didn’t just let slip the fact that you can basically smell everyone’s intimate goods all the time and say I wish you’d said something a long time ago. We could have—we’ve wasted a lot of time, Matt.”

“You could have said something, too, you know.”

Foggy scoffed.

“Hardly,” she said. “Think about it from my perspective: you know this hot guy, so hot, like so far out of your league you’re not even playing the same game anymore, and turns out he’s smart and he’s sweet and he’s good, too. He’s all good things. And he wants to be your friend. So you watch him go with girl after girl, all one million percent more beautiful and skinny and put together than you could ever hope to be, and maybe you love him so much it hurts you to look at him some days but you tell yourself it’s enough. Because you get to be there, every day. You get to catch his smiles and his jokes and his conversations, so you tell yourself it’s worth it to get at least this much.”

Matt shifted onto his side and faced her.

“There’s no such thing as leagues, you know,” he said.

Foggy snorted.

“Said just like a man playing in the majors.”

“I’m serious,” Matt said. “Attraction’s about so much more than what you take in with your eyes. If it weren’t, I would be shit outta luck, wouldn’t I? And Foggy—I know for a fact you’re not some kind of swamp beast. I’ve touched you. Before tonight, I mean. And now—God, Foggy, I don’t know how I’ll ever get enough of you.”

“But the girls you go with—”

“I’ve hardly ever pursued anyone,” he said. “They ask me out. I say yes. I’m charming on our date. We might sleep together or see each other a few more times. But in the end, what happens?” 

Foggy was silent, and Matt prompted her again. 

“It fizzles out,” Foggy whispered. Matt sighed.

“Yeah,” he said, “and it’s always me. I always let it go too long between phone calls or texts. I always stop responding enough for anyone’s standards. I always just…let them go. Because I’ve always been holding out for you, no matter how futile it got or how pathetic I felt. I just couldn’t stop hoping.”

Foggy closed her eyes and let her forehead fall against his. He hand trailed up her arm, swept over her neck and settled on her cheek.

“You’re too good for me, you know,” he said.

“Get outta here,” Foggy said.

“It’s true,” Matt said. “It’s a hundred percent true. Smart, funny, kind _and_ feels, sounds, smells and tastes good? I’m hoping I can get this whole thing in writing before you come to your senses.”

“Matthew Michael Murdock, did you just propose to me?”

“Spurious allegation, no basis in truth,” Matt said. 

“Worst proposal ever, Matt!”

“But if I _did_ , what might your answer be?”

“Gotta try out the goods some more first,” Foggy said. “Don’t want buyer’s remorse.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm hmm.”

“So what does that entail?”

“Dinner,” she said, “real fancy, the kind of burgers you need a fork and knife for.” Matt laughed.

“So noted,” he said. 

“Nice boyfriend stuff, like holding my hand at the park and letting me eat the end of your ice cream cone when it’s gone kind of soggy, and killing all house centipedes no questions asked.”

“Can do,” Matt said.

“Also anal.”

“Oh. Um.”

“I like it,” Foggy said. “I _really_ like it. Like dealbreaker like it. And some guys are real douches about it, so…” 

“I’d never hurt you,” Matt said. “I’d make it so good for you.” He paused, head tilted as if listening for someone. “Also if you ever tell me their names, I will make sure their penises never work again.”

Foggy grinned. She nudged her mouth into his and he opened to her like melting chocolate. His hand slid down to cup a breast as if weighing it in his palm. He sighed into her.

 _Ask me again_ , she wanted to say, but her lips sealed up around the words.

“Tell me about your senses,” she said instead. 

Matt’s eyes opened, and Foggy could have sworn they focused on her.

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> A female friend of mine with a traditionally male name was placed with a male roommate as a freshman. She got it straightened out, but it took weeks.


End file.
